1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to context-aware methods and systems for facilitating the delivery of healthcare to patients within a clinical environment monitored by real-time locating apparatus. At least one embodiment of the invention relates to methods and systems for monitoring and improving healthcare delivery processes within a clinical environment monitored by a real-time locating system (RTLS).
2. Background Art
As disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,154,135 and 6,838,992 auto-ID tags or badges are assigned to patients upon patient check-in or registration in a healthcare facility. Such tags emit radio-frequency (RF) and other signals such as infrared (IR) signals. The signals are used to establish the real-time location of the patients in a real-time locating system.
The ongoing assignment of such tags or badges to patients and the deletion of former badge assignments from the system requires frequent maintenance. This assignment and deletion has been done in the past with a computer system.
Healthcare environments, such as hospitals or clinics, include information systems, such as hospital information systems (HIS), radiology information systems (RIS), clinical information systems (CIS), and cardiovascular information systems (CVIS), and storage systems, such as picture archiving and communication systems (PACS), library information systems (LIS), and electronic medical records (EMR). Information stored may include patient medical histories, imaging data, test results, diagnosis information, management information, and/or scheduling information, for example. The information may be centrally stored or divided at a plurality of locations.
Healthcare practitioners may desire to access patient information or other information at various points in a healthcare workflow. For example, during surgery, medical personnel may access patient information, such as images of a patient's anatomy, that are stored in a medical information system. Alternatively, medical personnel may enter new information, such as history, diagnostic, or treatment information, into a medical information system during an ongoing medical procedure.
Patients may access information systems for scheduling, diagnosis and/or treatment information, check-in or admission, and/or other tasks. One or more of these systems comprise a healthcare information system, for example.
In typical healthcare settings, the patient registration process is a lengthy and repetitive procedure that patients must endure at nearly every encounter with a healthcare professional. Each new doctor, office, department, or even visit often requires a new set of forms to be completed. Moreover, paper-based forms are still widely used to document a patient's demographic information, medical history, current medications, allergies, and other information. These paper-based forms are often added to the patient's folder associated with the particular doctor, department, or office being visited. In many settings, the information provided by the patient is transcribed into an electronic healthcare information system. Of course, the transcription process is prone to error in data entry and necessarily results in the patient losing control of his or her data.
In more advanced healthcare enterprises, patients have the ability to input their relevant information directly into an electronic system, thus bypassing the transcription process. For example, kiosk systems enable patients to enter their information at a kiosk that aggregates and transmits the information to the healthcare information system. A kiosk is a small self-standing physical structure (often including a computer and a display screen) that displays information for people walking by. More sophisticated kiosks let users interact and include touch screens, keyboards, sound, and motion video. Examples of kiosk systems are disclosed in the following U.S. patent documents: 2004/0138924; 2004/0186744; 2005/0261942; 2006/0277071; 2007/0226010; and 2008/0040421.
U.S. Patent document 2009/0070142 discloses a method and system for providing patient registration information. The method includes requesting patient data, supplying the patient data using a mobile electronic device, storing the patient data to a memory associated with the mobile electronic device, and communicating the patient data to a remote data server.
The following U.S. patent documents disclose methods, systems and/or kiosks for objects and/or information and which are related to at least one embodiment of the present invention: 2007/0136154; 2008/0211671; 2008/0249883; 2008/0252414; U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,707,381; 7,113,088; 7,205,889; 7,317,393; 7,348,884; and 7,490,054.
The following U.S. patents are also related to the present invention: U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,868,859; 4,906,853; 5,017,794; 5,027,314; 5,027,383; 5,119,104; 5,131,019; 5,276,496; 5,355,222; 5,387,993; 5,548,637; 5,572,195; 6,104,295; 6,154,139; 6,462,656; and 6,838,992.
Despite the above prior art methods and systems, advances in medical science are causing processes for delivery of healthcare to continually grow more complex and costly. The effects caused by the increased complexity include greater opportunity for the introduction of human error and omission as well as higher staff related expenses incurred to deliver high quality care within the advanced technological healthcare environment.